Just add water

By Bennett Daviss

IF YOU believe that oil and water don’t mix, it’s time to meet Keith Johnson.
Recently retired as a professor of materials physics at MIT, Johnson has
succeeded where many have failed—by combining diesel fuel with tap water
to form a mixture that cuts pollution, maintains engine efficiency and works in
existing engines.

His fuel is as simple to make as instant coffee, yet it is stable for years.
If he can make it cheaply enough, it could improve the lives of millions of
people who live in cities packed with old, diesel-powered buses and cars. Their
clapped-out engines belch soot and nitrogen oxides (NOX) that damage
the environment and cause lung disease. Clean up vehicle exhausts, and these
cities should become cleaner and healthier places to live.

The reason that his fuel is so stable and green, says Johnson, is that he has
found a family of detergent-like surfactants that chemically bond molecules of
water to molecules of the diesel, nudging the water molecules into stable
20-molecule clusters resembling “buckyballs”. Johnson calculates that these
clusters pulsate with vibrations, an effect that endows them with remarkable
chemical properties. He has licensed his discovery to Quantum Energy
Technologies (QET), based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which plans to make and
market his watery fuel worldwide.

Johnson’s find is the culmination of research that started early this century
when car drivers noticed that adding a splash of water to their fuel often
boosted engine power. During the Second World War, researchers worked without
success to improve fuel performance and stretch supplies by doping petrol with
water. And in 1994, American physicist Rudolph

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